If the media hyperbole over India entering her 61st year of independence has resulted in anything besides people denouncing the Emergency all over again, it has been to make me realize how much I love the National Anthem. Many people have written about the anthem, written beautifully needless to say, and I thought it would be hubris to add to the set of distinguished posts.
But, despite myself, I am.
I listen to the re-released album Jana Gana Mana and stand so stunned at the various unbelievably beautiful interpretations of the simple melody, that I brought myself to write about them. (This, when I had decided that this space would be for flippant discussion over things that don't really matter to any of us.)
Drawing artistes from across the country and her various forms of music, the album is, as was intended, an amalgamation of all things musically patriotic, or patriotically musical. Every Lata Mangeshkar is represented by a DK Pattammal; every Bhimsen Joshi, by a Balamuralikrishna.
Each showing to us, using the same swaras, the same taala, the same words and the same bhaava, all that is diverse about their chosen streams of music, yet proving to us all too conclusively that Jana Gana Mana is the great unifier. Note how each of them interprets even the smallest of murkis differently, sounding so different from each other, and still sounding so alike.
I get gooseflesh when I listen to that great doyen, part of the female trinity of Carnatic Classical music, DK Pattammal singing the ode to Dispenser of India's Destiny; or when Lata, that picture of greatness, negotiates the high note of Jaya he, when she was a ripe 70.
The tune itself is very simple; based on Bilaawal/Shankaraabharanam (wherever your affiliation lies), raagas that have been used so often in popular film songs. Yet, with this song, it evokes something so dormant in most of us.
I am not a very patriotic person, if jingoism is what is construed to be patriotism these days. I do not end a speech/performance on stage with a Jai Hind, or stick a plastic tricolour to my bike on Independence Day, or insist on standing up while the national anthem plays. I do not.
But this song, much cliched as it sounds, makes me very proud. And very happy. It makes me want to go back to school and sing it out loud with hundreds of other kids, each one holding a pitch ranging from A to Z and then some.
While being in school, singing the National Anthem, 'wasting' 52! seconds seemed like a ritual as dreary and ill-gotten as getting the school diary signed, or wearing polished shoes, or attending Moral Science classes. It had been over six years that I had last sung the National Anthem before the TV invasion of the anthem happened, and since then I must have sung/listened/hummed it enough to make up for all the lost years. May be it is the innate pride over how far we have come since 1947; since the day when a Line killed millions, fractured an entire geography, and threatened to put the subcontinent back to the days of uncertainty, despite the 'independence'. And look where we are today! If this isn't a giant leap for mankind, little else is. Agreed the country still has the corruption, the dowry, the redtape, and the works. But, if we have achieved as much as we have in as little as 60 years despite all these impediments, imagine what the Indian spirit, alive in every one of the billion, could achieve in the next 60.
We, as the citizens of the country, are in that sense, the true Dispensers of India's Destiny; and I am inclined to believe that Tagore thought of this very thing while he penned the anthem.
As Independent India turns a glorious 61, glorious visions of the future hold me in thrall. And I stand an excited spectator in my little corner and watch the spectacular symphony as it unfolds, note by note, movement by movement, over the whole of the country.
This got too pedantic, I know. So, I stop.
You, all of you, go listen to Jana Gana Mana, or better still, sing it out loud.
(It doesn't have to be Independence Day to, you know.)
Friday, August 17, 2007
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Did we all grow up too soon?
It was not the first time that my wonder on wheels had thrown a fit. So much for nomenclature, that wondrous contraption on two rickety wheels is hardly a 'Sport'.
For the third time in as many months, my Hardly Davidson (control that smirk you, my friends thought that was funny. Okay, used to. Three years ago) was having a flat tyre, bad brakes, and was generally being a bitch. And so, I was making a Tughlaqesque journey, with much panting, to the mechanic's.
As I sat there waiting for Salim/Javed/Naved to be the desi Fulliautomatix and leave oily fingerprints over beloved Lalchhadi, I had all the time to indulge myself in an activity I like doing best. Watching people. Watching people do stupid things. Okay, judge me all, watching people do stupid things, and then laughing about it. I did quite a bit of it, the watching I mean, considering that the mechanic and his minions have their ways of making you want to fall at their greaseful feet to get your sulking bitch to move again. Disgraceful. Which was fine. For, there came to focus the first Oh-dear-lord sight of the day.
[I urge all my fine readers of refined sensibilities to cast an eye on the hoi polloi, (populating streets of Bangalore that aren't called Brigade Road/MG Road/Church Street), and to keep it cast thus for a while, for they present to you sights of unimaginable wonder, at least to the middle-class, Brahmin, prude self that is mine.]
Here in this dingy by-lane of a dingier locality, turning more incredible by the minute to my incredulous self, I sat watching in wonder, (with my jaw sweeping the grease off the floor might I add), a young impressionable boy and a younger impressionable girl walking together arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand, very much in love and evidently making no efforts to hide it, what with the loud squeals of laughter that seemed to work by a metronome of once every 6 seconds.
Now, despite being a self-declared prude, I am strangely tolerant to public displays of affection; mostly because of the sheepish looks on the faces of the people involved, and what-the-hell, the first few days of being in love are something else.
The aforementioned incident of les inseparables, would in perspective, seem entirely much ado about zilch, except that the Agapornis taking flight here were no more than twelve, and in their white and blue school uniforms; tie-belt in place. What's more, our little Romeo here, with facial hair sparser than penguins on a Bangalore street, was marking his trail with frail, yet perfectly formed smoke-rings!
Hello? This is Bangalore? was what my dominant parietal lobe trying to articulate, but got waylaid into doing the -
Dekh tere sansaar ki haalat kya ho gayi bhagwaan,
Kitna badal gaya insaan
- routine.
Which was just as well, for I felt a hand tap on my shoulder and a girl's voice ask, "What problem?".
Now this was our mechanic's minion, Khaled (close enough), Chhotu for obvious reasons. Barely 4 feet above ground, he got to working on Laalchhadi, like the little virtuoso, that all these mechanic shop children somehow always are. He told me that he was seven, and that he earned for his entire family; being the second eldest in a family of six children, the responsibility of feeding many mouths rested on him too.
I was taken slightly aback, I admit. Within a span of ten minutes, I had seen two situations as different from each other as South India is from the North, yet strangely held by a common thread. I couldn't help but wonder, that whatever may be the reason, we as a generation, as children of the new century, grew up too soon.
Theorizing like Socrates (ah, the pseudo me), I rode back home on the Khaled-ized Laalchhadi, to a surprise as pleasant as any. My brother, merely Four Seasons wiser than me, was placed in a software company (where else?), and would be a taxpayer at tender 21. And it seemed like only yesterday that he cried like a baby without a rattle, when he got less marks in Physics in Class XII. The whole growing up too soon brainwave only got stronger. If thousands of years hence, a Hawking sort (without the Lou Gehrig, of course, 'cos medicine would have conquered everything by then) wrote "A Not So Brief History Of Time", we'd be chronicled in the palimpsests of time as the generation that paved the way to growing up too soon.
Whatever may be the circumstances that led to it,
whatever may be the socio-technological reasons for it,
and whatever good or bad came of it,
we all did grow up too soon, don't y'all think?
My Bollywood-esque reverie was broken by a rather shrill scowl. My kid-cousin, barely a year old, was throwing a fit at his mother for having given him the dummy telephone to play with, when the gadget of his choice was, but obviously, the new and gleaming mobile phone!
Beaming like the Buddha, I thought to myself, 'Well, he is well on his way.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
written about two years ago; needless to say, needs to be hemmed and hawed all over.
For the third time in as many months, my Hardly Davidson (control that smirk you, my friends thought that was funny. Okay, used to. Three years ago) was having a flat tyre, bad brakes, and was generally being a bitch. And so, I was making a Tughlaqesque journey, with much panting, to the mechanic's.
As I sat there waiting for Salim/Javed/Naved to be the desi Fulliautomatix and leave oily fingerprints over beloved Lalchhadi, I had all the time to indulge myself in an activity I like doing best. Watching people. Watching people do stupid things. Okay, judge me all, watching people do stupid things, and then laughing about it. I did quite a bit of it, the watching I mean, considering that the mechanic and his minions have their ways of making you want to fall at their greaseful feet to get your sulking bitch to move again. Disgraceful. Which was fine. For, there came to focus the first Oh-dear-lord sight of the day.
[I urge all my fine readers of refined sensibilities to cast an eye on the hoi polloi, (populating streets of Bangalore that aren't called Brigade Road/MG Road/Church Street), and to keep it cast thus for a while, for they present to you sights of unimaginable wonder, at least to the middle-class, Brahmin, prude self that is mine.]
Here in this dingy by-lane of a dingier locality, turning more incredible by the minute to my incredulous self, I sat watching in wonder, (with my jaw sweeping the grease off the floor might I add), a young impressionable boy and a younger impressionable girl walking together arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand, very much in love and evidently making no efforts to hide it, what with the loud squeals of laughter that seemed to work by a metronome of once every 6 seconds.
Now, despite being a self-declared prude, I am strangely tolerant to public displays of affection; mostly because of the sheepish looks on the faces of the people involved, and what-the-hell, the first few days of being in love are something else.
The aforementioned incident of les inseparables, would in perspective, seem entirely much ado about zilch, except that the Agapornis taking flight here were no more than twelve, and in their white and blue school uniforms; tie-belt in place. What's more, our little Romeo here, with facial hair sparser than penguins on a Bangalore street, was marking his trail with frail, yet perfectly formed smoke-rings!
Hello? This is Bangalore? was what my dominant parietal lobe trying to articulate, but got waylaid into doing the -
Dekh tere sansaar ki haalat kya ho gayi bhagwaan,
Kitna badal gaya insaan
- routine.
Which was just as well, for I felt a hand tap on my shoulder and a girl's voice ask, "What problem?".
Now this was our mechanic's minion, Khaled (close enough), Chhotu for obvious reasons. Barely 4 feet above ground, he got to working on Laalchhadi, like the little virtuoso, that all these mechanic shop children somehow always are. He told me that he was seven, and that he earned for his entire family; being the second eldest in a family of six children, the responsibility of feeding many mouths rested on him too.
I was taken slightly aback, I admit. Within a span of ten minutes, I had seen two situations as different from each other as South India is from the North, yet strangely held by a common thread. I couldn't help but wonder, that whatever may be the reason, we as a generation, as children of the new century, grew up too soon.
Theorizing like Socrates (ah, the pseudo me), I rode back home on the Khaled-ized Laalchhadi, to a surprise as pleasant as any. My brother, merely Four Seasons wiser than me, was placed in a software company (where else?), and would be a taxpayer at tender 21. And it seemed like only yesterday that he cried like a baby without a rattle, when he got less marks in Physics in Class XII. The whole growing up too soon brainwave only got stronger. If thousands of years hence, a Hawking sort (without the Lou Gehrig, of course, 'cos medicine would have conquered everything by then) wrote "A Not So Brief History Of Time", we'd be chronicled in the palimpsests of time as the generation that paved the way to growing up too soon.
Whatever may be the circumstances that led to it,
whatever may be the socio-technological reasons for it,
and whatever good or bad came of it,
we all did grow up too soon, don't y'all think?
My Bollywood-esque reverie was broken by a rather shrill scowl. My kid-cousin, barely a year old, was throwing a fit at his mother for having given him the dummy telephone to play with, when the gadget of his choice was, but obviously, the new and gleaming mobile phone!
Beaming like the Buddha, I thought to myself, 'Well, he is well on his way.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
written about two years ago; needless to say, needs to be hemmed and hawed all over.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Harry Potter 7 Sucks (Succinct, eh?)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows?
No. Try Harry Potter and the Deadly Hollows. (the depth in the plot is astonishingly hollow)
If you think this is bad writing (which it most undoubtedly is), i suggest you read the seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, also called,
Crappy Crapper and the Craply Crap-lows.
Farty Farter and the Farty Fartows, or
Harry Potter and the oh-my-god-this-book-sucks-so-much-it-should-either-replace-Linda Lovelace-or-be-the-face-of-Whisper.
You get the hint. Subtlety has never been my thing.
(Referring to excrement is, one would think)
(But, that's for another day)
Now, this book.
The most awaited book in all of known human history. And rightly so. Not for a moment do i grudge JK Rowling the fame she has achieved, or the anticipation which was associated with her last creation in the series.
The place she told us about, the people she introduced us to, the impossible magical things/actions she brought forth to us seemed close to our hearts, seemed terribly enjoyable, and most importantly seemed believable. So much so, if somebody told me Hogwarts exists in some far corner of Northern England, i would believe him, and lament my not getting an envelope addressed to me in green ink, delivered by a tawny owl. I would.
In all my fairly extensive reading of fiction in English, it is rare that I have really, really liked characters enough to claim that I have figured that character out. Franny from Franny and Zooey was one such.
The only other such character was Professor Dumbledore; the character exuded so much aura, so much positivity, so much sureness. It is my firm belief that Dumbledore was the best character JK created.
His character being reduced to a shadow of his actual self, and casting doubts on his impeccably infallible moral fibre is the stuff literary hara-kiri is made of. This one, being one of the many reasons why I think this book was not written by JK, and was in fact ghostwritten by Madonna.
(Aside : skip if you don't have the time.
My love for the series, like most things, has an intimate personal angle. I was 11 when Harry was 11, 12 when he was 12, and so on. People have variously described me as scrawny, very thin for my age; and my hair as jet black, ALWAYS unkempt and long; also, that I have an almost pathological urge to pick fights with stupid teachers. As any Harry Potter fan worth his uppu will tell you, these very adjectives have been used in relation with our boy Harry.
So yes, I assumed that I was Harry Potter. Oh come on, don't laugh. I am sure you had weirder delusions.
Aside to an aside : I sulked for a week when this stupid little Caucasian boy called Daniel Radcliffe was chosen to play Harry. But then consoled myself, blaming it on racially discriminating, culturally intolerant Britain.)
So now, hark all,
Reasons why I think The Book was ghostwritten by Madonna -
1. The book lacks imagination.
JK did not have a specific style to speak of, but what she did have was the ability to draw her reader into a world that seemed as impossible as it was believable. And all that, because a great part of her cerebral cortex was devoted to storytelling abilities. The mere fact that she has an age-independent fan following of millions is testimony to her incredible imagination that has surprised and stunned us book after book. This element of surprise, making us read with jaws hitting the floor is conspicuous by its very lamentable absence in this edition.
2. Everything CANNOT be a chance escape.
The Wedding, Escape from the Ministry of Magic, Escape from Gringott's, Escape from The Malfoy Manor.
Agreed Murphy rules over only us Muggles, and that Harry lives in a magical world, but come on, cut us some slack. Probability was a possibility JK never considered while writing the book. The probability here being Harry and his cronies going wrong, especially when the odds of that happening were astronomically high.
Also, by chance, there happens to be a secret passage from the Room of Requirements to Hog's Head, which by chance is also where Aberforth Dumbledore works, who by chance has bought the Dual Mirror from Mundungus Fletcher, who by chance would have flicked it from Harry.
Oh. My. God.
3. Blimey, what's with the Polyjuice Potion eh?
The whole concept of this Polyjuice Potion in the second and fourth books seemed neat, alright. Very skillfully used. The flipside to this book is of course that it is used with so much impunity that one wonders if water is the new Polyjuice Potion.
A classic example of imagination doing an Atacama, or Madonna calling the shots.
4. Expelliarmus sucks. So does Stupefy.
What Avada Kedavra is to The Dark Lord, Expelliarmus is to The Boy Who Lived. You have GOT to be kidding me, specially so when he has already done this Expelliarmus thingy in the fourth book, and if Voldy is the sly thing that we have believed him to be, he must have learnt his lessons.
Like an equally disgruntled friend put it, "To claim that a spell as elemenatary as Expelliarmus to be the signature spell of the boy who was destined to bring about the Dark Lord's fall, is asking too much of our imagination's credulity". And i could not agree more.
5. Characters no. Caricatures yes.
Dumbledore wore the cursed ring because "it was a mistake; i was being a fool". Huh?
Dumbledore collaborated with Grimmelwald because "I was young and foolish". HUH?
If establishing ole Albus as human was what she was angling for, she made a mistake, this Rowling. Especially when it is indelibly etched on our minds that Dumbledore was the one reassuring character, the one element of clarity, the one pair of deft hands that unravels thread by thread, every questionable consequence.
The very woman who created Dumbledore for me, also undid him for me.
I am very, very disappointed.
Snape. Severus Snape.
Why did Dumbledore believe in Snape as much as he did? Not explained.
And to assert that Snape's unwavering, never-ending love for Lily was the sole reason he risked his life to protect Harry, especially when half of Harry's chromosomes were a contribution of James, a figure he hated more than is physically possible, seems too much of a stretch to be deemed plausible.
And of course, as JK is wont to, he dies a maha lame death as well.
Ron Weasley. Always a caricature; never liked the character. This time, was deplorably depicted.
Sybil Trelawney. A character I rather liked. Her weirdness, her quirks, all of it. More so, because Emma Thompson added a little something to her character. And this woman Trelawney, who has devoted all her life to Divination, throws her treasured crystal balls in the end at the Death Eaters. How much more abysmally could one destroy characters, like literally?
The Dark Lord aka Tom Marvolo Riddle aka Voldemort.
He could well be called The Snivelling Mouse.
Just where was the terror he invoked, the kind that had me peeing in my pants, when he came to life at the end of the fourth book? Just where?
6. Dude, where's my explanation?
Sirius Black goes Behind the Veil, and is pronounced dead. (Nobody died a less eventful death) Luna Lovegood says, she can speak to her mother from beyond the veil. Where and when did that happen between Harry and Sirius?
In the King's Cross chapter, what is the wriggling creature seen under the chair? Is it the phoenix, or Voldemort, or a poisoned mouse dying?
Aberforth, our man at Hog's Head. Just HOW did he get into Hogsmeade, especially when Death Eaters have made it their backyard? Did they let him go scotfree, because he gave them some goats for otherworldly pleasures?
Explain the Death Stick. When Ole Dumbly dies, his wand is not snapped, contrary to wizarding tradition. But when Voldy breaks his tomb open, there is a wand, which is mistaken to be the Death Stick. Whose wand was it? How do the events on the tower correlate with everything else that happens later on?
I have my theories, as do all of you. But which is the right one?
(This is Harry Potter, and NOT 2001: A Space Odyssey)
What about the Giant troops that Hagrid goes to recruit?
Where is the French contingent with Madame Maxime?
What the fuck is Grawp doing in the book, anyway?
Where were the Trolls and other beastly creatures that The Order was afraid Voldemort would recruit?
Answer answer answer?
7. Who stole your Chekhov's gun?
"could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald. I think her mind’s going, personally!
Lots of love, Lily"
“Just in case they’re --- busy --- and you get the chance ---“
“Kill the snake?”
“Kill the snake,” Harry repeated.
“All right, Harry. You’re okay, are you?”
“I’m fine. Thanks, Neville.”
This woman is great at foregrounding, she is. But fair ladies and dear gentlemen, read the above extracts, and hit your heads against the nearest wall, in exasperation.
The first passage was the torn part of the letter Lily had written. While the first part was shown to us, we expected deadly secrets in the other part, which we guessed was the reason why it was stolen in the first place. But turns out, no. Snivelly Snape flicks it because it had his Lily's autograph. Aargh.
Wipe your greasy parting with that love parchment, chump.
The second passage, a rather innocuous piece of conversation. Instructing a hitherto dudhead dufus to get rid of a deadly snake, which happens to be Voldemort's pet, and oh, which also happens to be one of the Horcruxes. And guess what, he does!
(Madonna, definitely.)
8. Mumbo-jumbo.
Things of convenience.
Room of Requirements.
Elf magic (which works in mysterious ways beyond human comprehension) moonlighting as deus ex machina.
AND,
About Harry being able to see what Voldemort is up to. This little window to The Dark Lord's creepy mind seems like the silliest explanation she has come up with to give Harry a sense of what to do next. Did Voldemort not use this window to his favour, when he tricked Harry into the Ministry of Magic?
Did JK forget her own creation of the whole Occlumency concept? Or that Voldemort was a master Legilimens?
Ron spoke Parseltongue by trial and error to open the Chamber of Secrets, as he had heard the intonations when Harry spoke the tongue. And as one would expect, it worked!
(I wonder. Just why didn't Petrificus totalus work when i tried it on a nag of a classmate then? After all, i have read all about it since the past seven years)
(The woman was definitely on wild mushrooms, grown with liberal usage of lead and mercury)
9. The Amar-Akbar-Anthony finish. Taaliyan, taaliyan, taaliyan.
Madonna got together with Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, David Dhawan and Johnny Lever (for good measure) to write the climax. So, they came up with a Bollywoodesque twist to the plot.
Everybody comes out to fight.
There are comic interludes as fights are happening. There, the David Dhawan touch, unmistakeable.
You know, situations where during the climax, a comedian makes a fool of a thug, while sprightly background music happens. (Think Andaz Apna Apna, or Hum Hain Raahi Pyaar Ke)
Yess, like that.
Wah, wah, kwak-thoo.
The power of the Maa. (There, our man Manmohan.)
Molly Weasley can't take it anymore. Instead of Accio-ing woks and saucepans, she Accio-s magic she hasn't used since her first puerperium and knocks off Bellatrix Lestrange (that dreaded Death Eater who breathes Avada Kedavra), like she was no more than a gnome that came in the way of her gummyboots, while on a leisurely arthritic walk in her backyard.
*and now all hold breath for the top reason why this book sucks ass*
10. THE UNTHINKABLE.
What WAS that epilogue all about?
Joanne Kathleen Rowling, just WHAT were you thinking?
Harry Potter, the boy wizard, is 36 and a father of three? With the children being called James, Lily, and oh-my-god Albus Severus? (At this point, i could not hold it. Projectile vomiting. Damn, my monitor still shows stains)
(I cannot stop thinking of Harry as a middle aged man, with graying temples, a potbelly, foul English mouth and a bad gas problem.)
ANATHEMA.
Why did you do it, woman richer than the queen?
Why did you ruin Harry Potter for me thus?
Where was the magic?
Where were you?
Was it the money? Was it Madonna? Was it the mushrooms? Was it the movies? (Because, your writing seemed like you were writing a screenplay, never a story)
I am deeply disappointed. Why, it shows.
I am affected enough to write a 2000 word article while i am in a busy posting (Medicine).
After endless discussions with friends that think very similarly, I still cannot come up with an explanation for your undoing of Harry Potter.
To undo the undoing, you had better come up with an eighth book, with the characters not beyond 18 years of age, and with a preface whose header reads, "Blimey, i screwed up".
Until such a time, we live in hope, and pretend, despite all the media hyperbole, that the seventh book wasn't released at all.
Ah, the hope.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
For D, who hated the book too, but never shied away from discussing it for hours on end despite all the masochism involved,
and Rani Rosie, who probably hated it the most, and is currently (fervently) performing cleansing rituals to remove any last traces of the abomination that was the book, from her rather Stupefy-ed brain.
Love you guys.
No. Try Harry Potter and the Deadly Hollows. (the depth in the plot is astonishingly hollow)
If you think this is bad writing (which it most undoubtedly is), i suggest you read the seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, also called,
Crappy Crapper and the Craply Crap-lows.
Farty Farter and the Farty Fartows, or
Harry Potter and the oh-my-god-this-book-sucks-so-much-it-should-either-replace-Linda Lovelace-or-be-the-face-of-Whisper.
You get the hint. Subtlety has never been my thing.
(Referring to excrement is, one would think)
(But, that's for another day)
Now, this book.
The most awaited book in all of known human history. And rightly so. Not for a moment do i grudge JK Rowling the fame she has achieved, or the anticipation which was associated with her last creation in the series.
The place she told us about, the people she introduced us to, the impossible magical things/actions she brought forth to us seemed close to our hearts, seemed terribly enjoyable, and most importantly seemed believable. So much so, if somebody told me Hogwarts exists in some far corner of Northern England, i would believe him, and lament my not getting an envelope addressed to me in green ink, delivered by a tawny owl. I would.
In all my fairly extensive reading of fiction in English, it is rare that I have really, really liked characters enough to claim that I have figured that character out. Franny from Franny and Zooey was one such.
The only other such character was Professor Dumbledore; the character exuded so much aura, so much positivity, so much sureness. It is my firm belief that Dumbledore was the best character JK created.
His character being reduced to a shadow of his actual self, and casting doubts on his impeccably infallible moral fibre is the stuff literary hara-kiri is made of. This one, being one of the many reasons why I think this book was not written by JK, and was in fact ghostwritten by Madonna.
(Aside : skip if you don't have the time.
My love for the series, like most things, has an intimate personal angle. I was 11 when Harry was 11, 12 when he was 12, and so on. People have variously described me as scrawny, very thin for my age; and my hair as jet black, ALWAYS unkempt and long; also, that I have an almost pathological urge to pick fights with stupid teachers. As any Harry Potter fan worth his uppu will tell you, these very adjectives have been used in relation with our boy Harry.
So yes, I assumed that I was Harry Potter. Oh come on, don't laugh. I am sure you had weirder delusions.
Aside to an aside : I sulked for a week when this stupid little Caucasian boy called Daniel Radcliffe was chosen to play Harry. But then consoled myself, blaming it on racially discriminating, culturally intolerant Britain.)
So now, hark all,
Reasons why I think The Book was ghostwritten by Madonna -
1. The book lacks imagination.
JK did not have a specific style to speak of, but what she did have was the ability to draw her reader into a world that seemed as impossible as it was believable. And all that, because a great part of her cerebral cortex was devoted to storytelling abilities. The mere fact that she has an age-independent fan following of millions is testimony to her incredible imagination that has surprised and stunned us book after book. This element of surprise, making us read with jaws hitting the floor is conspicuous by its very lamentable absence in this edition.
2. Everything CANNOT be a chance escape.
The Wedding, Escape from the Ministry of Magic, Escape from Gringott's, Escape from The Malfoy Manor.
Agreed Murphy rules over only us Muggles, and that Harry lives in a magical world, but come on, cut us some slack. Probability was a possibility JK never considered while writing the book. The probability here being Harry and his cronies going wrong, especially when the odds of that happening were astronomically high.
Also, by chance, there happens to be a secret passage from the Room of Requirements to Hog's Head, which by chance is also where Aberforth Dumbledore works, who by chance has bought the Dual Mirror from Mundungus Fletcher, who by chance would have flicked it from Harry.
Oh. My. God.
3. Blimey, what's with the Polyjuice Potion eh?
The whole concept of this Polyjuice Potion in the second and fourth books seemed neat, alright. Very skillfully used. The flipside to this book is of course that it is used with so much impunity that one wonders if water is the new Polyjuice Potion.
A classic example of imagination doing an Atacama, or Madonna calling the shots.
4. Expelliarmus sucks. So does Stupefy.
What Avada Kedavra is to The Dark Lord, Expelliarmus is to The Boy Who Lived. You have GOT to be kidding me, specially so when he has already done this Expelliarmus thingy in the fourth book, and if Voldy is the sly thing that we have believed him to be, he must have learnt his lessons.
Like an equally disgruntled friend put it, "To claim that a spell as elemenatary as Expelliarmus to be the signature spell of the boy who was destined to bring about the Dark Lord's fall, is asking too much of our imagination's credulity". And i could not agree more.
5. Characters no. Caricatures yes.
Dumbledore wore the cursed ring because "it was a mistake; i was being a fool". Huh?
Dumbledore collaborated with Grimmelwald because "I was young and foolish". HUH?
If establishing ole Albus as human was what she was angling for, she made a mistake, this Rowling. Especially when it is indelibly etched on our minds that Dumbledore was the one reassuring character, the one element of clarity, the one pair of deft hands that unravels thread by thread, every questionable consequence.
The very woman who created Dumbledore for me, also undid him for me.
I am very, very disappointed.
Snape. Severus Snape.
Why did Dumbledore believe in Snape as much as he did? Not explained.
And to assert that Snape's unwavering, never-ending love for Lily was the sole reason he risked his life to protect Harry, especially when half of Harry's chromosomes were a contribution of James, a figure he hated more than is physically possible, seems too much of a stretch to be deemed plausible.
And of course, as JK is wont to, he dies a maha lame death as well.
Ron Weasley. Always a caricature; never liked the character. This time, was deplorably depicted.
Sybil Trelawney. A character I rather liked. Her weirdness, her quirks, all of it. More so, because Emma Thompson added a little something to her character. And this woman Trelawney, who has devoted all her life to Divination, throws her treasured crystal balls in the end at the Death Eaters. How much more abysmally could one destroy characters, like literally?
The Dark Lord aka Tom Marvolo Riddle aka Voldemort.
He could well be called The Snivelling Mouse.
Just where was the terror he invoked, the kind that had me peeing in my pants, when he came to life at the end of the fourth book? Just where?
6. Dude, where's my explanation?
Sirius Black goes Behind the Veil, and is pronounced dead. (Nobody died a less eventful death) Luna Lovegood says, she can speak to her mother from beyond the veil. Where and when did that happen between Harry and Sirius?
In the King's Cross chapter, what is the wriggling creature seen under the chair? Is it the phoenix, or Voldemort, or a poisoned mouse dying?
Aberforth, our man at Hog's Head. Just HOW did he get into Hogsmeade, especially when Death Eaters have made it their backyard? Did they let him go scotfree, because he gave them some goats for otherworldly pleasures?
Explain the Death Stick. When Ole Dumbly dies, his wand is not snapped, contrary to wizarding tradition. But when Voldy breaks his tomb open, there is a wand, which is mistaken to be the Death Stick. Whose wand was it? How do the events on the tower correlate with everything else that happens later on?
I have my theories, as do all of you. But which is the right one?
(This is Harry Potter, and NOT 2001: A Space Odyssey)
What about the Giant troops that Hagrid goes to recruit?
Where is the French contingent with Madame Maxime?
What the fuck is Grawp doing in the book, anyway?
Where were the Trolls and other beastly creatures that The Order was afraid Voldemort would recruit?
Answer answer answer?
7. Who stole your Chekhov's gun?
"could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald. I think her mind’s going, personally!
Lots of love, Lily"
“Just in case they’re --- busy --- and you get the chance ---“
“Kill the snake?”
“Kill the snake,” Harry repeated.
“All right, Harry. You’re okay, are you?”
“I’m fine. Thanks, Neville.”
This woman is great at foregrounding, she is. But fair ladies and dear gentlemen, read the above extracts, and hit your heads against the nearest wall, in exasperation.
The first passage was the torn part of the letter Lily had written. While the first part was shown to us, we expected deadly secrets in the other part, which we guessed was the reason why it was stolen in the first place. But turns out, no. Snivelly Snape flicks it because it had his Lily's autograph. Aargh.
Wipe your greasy parting with that love parchment, chump.
The second passage, a rather innocuous piece of conversation. Instructing a hitherto dudhead dufus to get rid of a deadly snake, which happens to be Voldemort's pet, and oh, which also happens to be one of the Horcruxes. And guess what, he does!
(Madonna, definitely.)
8. Mumbo-jumbo.
Things of convenience.
Room of Requirements.
Elf magic (which works in mysterious ways beyond human comprehension) moonlighting as deus ex machina.
AND,
About Harry being able to see what Voldemort is up to. This little window to The Dark Lord's creepy mind seems like the silliest explanation she has come up with to give Harry a sense of what to do next. Did Voldemort not use this window to his favour, when he tricked Harry into the Ministry of Magic?
Did JK forget her own creation of the whole Occlumency concept? Or that Voldemort was a master Legilimens?
Ron spoke Parseltongue by trial and error to open the Chamber of Secrets, as he had heard the intonations when Harry spoke the tongue. And as one would expect, it worked!
(I wonder. Just why didn't Petrificus totalus work when i tried it on a nag of a classmate then? After all, i have read all about it since the past seven years)
(The woman was definitely on wild mushrooms, grown with liberal usage of lead and mercury)
9. The Amar-Akbar-Anthony finish. Taaliyan, taaliyan, taaliyan.
Madonna got together with Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, David Dhawan and Johnny Lever (for good measure) to write the climax. So, they came up with a Bollywoodesque twist to the plot.
Everybody comes out to fight.
There are comic interludes as fights are happening. There, the David Dhawan touch, unmistakeable.
You know, situations where during the climax, a comedian makes a fool of a thug, while sprightly background music happens. (Think Andaz Apna Apna, or Hum Hain Raahi Pyaar Ke)
Yess, like that.
Wah, wah, kwak-thoo.
The power of the Maa. (There, our man Manmohan.)
Molly Weasley can't take it anymore. Instead of Accio-ing woks and saucepans, she Accio-s magic she hasn't used since her first puerperium and knocks off Bellatrix Lestrange (that dreaded Death Eater who breathes Avada Kedavra), like she was no more than a gnome that came in the way of her gummyboots, while on a leisurely arthritic walk in her backyard.
*and now all hold breath for the top reason why this book sucks ass*
10. THE UNTHINKABLE.
What WAS that epilogue all about?
Joanne Kathleen Rowling, just WHAT were you thinking?
Harry Potter, the boy wizard, is 36 and a father of three? With the children being called James, Lily, and oh-my-god Albus Severus? (At this point, i could not hold it. Projectile vomiting. Damn, my monitor still shows stains)
(I cannot stop thinking of Harry as a middle aged man, with graying temples, a potbelly, foul English mouth and a bad gas problem.)
ANATHEMA.
Why did you do it, woman richer than the queen?
Why did you ruin Harry Potter for me thus?
Where was the magic?
Where were you?
Was it the money? Was it Madonna? Was it the mushrooms? Was it the movies? (Because, your writing seemed like you were writing a screenplay, never a story)
I am deeply disappointed. Why, it shows.
I am affected enough to write a 2000 word article while i am in a busy posting (Medicine).
After endless discussions with friends that think very similarly, I still cannot come up with an explanation for your undoing of Harry Potter.
To undo the undoing, you had better come up with an eighth book, with the characters not beyond 18 years of age, and with a preface whose header reads, "Blimey, i screwed up".
Until such a time, we live in hope, and pretend, despite all the media hyperbole, that the seventh book wasn't released at all.
Ah, the hope.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
For D, who hated the book too, but never shied away from discussing it for hours on end despite all the masochism involved,
and Rani Rosie, who probably hated it the most, and is currently (fervently) performing cleansing rituals to remove any last traces of the abomination that was the book, from her rather Stupefy-ed brain.
Love you guys.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Fragile
Have you ever known the feeling when you want to do something for somebody so bad that it hurts, but you just cannot?
Have you ever felt so inadequate that it makes you want to cry in helplessness?
Have you ever been in a place when people around you feel hopeless, but you cannot come up with anything to console them?
I have.
Since the past couple of weeks.
I am posted in pediatrics these days. And at times, i am depressed.
Why? Because,
Nothing in medical education prepares us to tell vulnerable parents that their child, the one sleeping on the bed rather blissfully, might not make it until long.
Nothing in all the extensive training braces us enough to stand the grief of a mother (who works 14 hours a day as a coolie, for a less than hand-to-mouth existence) who is told that her child will not survive unless she went through a surgery that costs 6 lakhs of rupees, a sum of money she cannot even imagine there being.
And nothing, absolutely nothing can make us strong enough to answer the question parents dread we would answer in the negative : "Is there any hope, at all?"
One understands that by choosing medicine we have chosen a path that requires us to be a lot stronger than most people our age. But it remains that we are just 21 year olds, trying to pass exams, going through lives as complicated/mundane/hormone-driven as any 21 year olds', and that we do not have any answers.
We might have cut open a dead body, but that's just where our bravery ends.
We might look dapper in white coats with expensive stethoscopes, but that's just where our being doctors ends.
A few days ago, i spoke to a woman whose son had been admitted in the hospital. The son was a cherubic 3 year old with cerebral palsy, the fault perhaps of a local daai, who took too long to deliver the baby, or whoever else's. But one thing is certain, the child had cerebral palsy. A fairly common condition in the wards, and sometimes very crippling.
This particular child had a global developmental delay, meaning all aspects of his development were either retarded or absent. A truth the mother has grown accustomed to be oblivious to. She says the child looks at her, turns his head toward sounds she makes, and smiles from ear to ear when spoken to.
The reason this story is throat-gulp inducing is because all of it is impossible.
The child has cortical blindness, his brains cannot read the images brought by his eyes.
The child cannot hear any sound, let alone those the mother makes. He merely turns his head hither and thither, acknowledging a world only he lives in, a world not inhabited by even this woman who has given her all for this baby, her only one, for the past three years.
What do you tell her when she asks you, "He is alright, isn't he?"
Do you tell her that the apple of her eye does not have the eyes to see you, or the mind to recognize you, ever? Do you tell her this and hope to have the courage to console her?
You don't.
We don't, either.
We say, "Please talk to senior doctors, we are just students", and whisk away from the place to find a strong pillar to punch our clenched fists against. Not because we are incapable of helping the child medically, but because we are incapable of even saying words that would comfort her, albeit momentarily.
Worse is a visit to the neonatal ICU, where little babies weighing as little as 900 grams, looking no larger than the palm of your hand, struggle it out with their small lungs, failing hearts and tightly clenched fists, praying in their own languages, 'please god, please, i promise i will be a good boy'.
With a hundred tubes sticking out all over their bodies, synchronized beep-beeps are all they have for company with the beeps more often than not, counting down their final breaths and heartbeats.
And you merely tap at the glass cabin that is their home,
and feel helpless.
This is a phase every medical student goes through, i guess. This is the stuff hospital dramas on TV are made of, since forever. Only, this is the only thing they get close to showing the truth about.
Over time, we get refractory to this whole phenomenon, i am told. It amuses, or perhaps angers some of my non-medical friends when i sometimes talk of death and illness in a matter-of-fact manner. It angers me, in retrospect, when i think of myself having become thus, where illness is a case to be taken, and death, a figure on the register. But this is the only way i know of being. The system has not prepared me, or any of my friends to deal with situations like these.
Death, to us is cessation of cardiopulmonary activity and non-reactive pupils, as opposed to it being a bereavement and loss of livelihood to an entire family.
If depersonalizing oneself is what it takes to make it as a successful doctor, then may be i will not be one. For, i still feel sad for a woman of 40, whose only chance of being a mother counts its last few minutes on an ICU bed.
I am not saying others do not feel sorry for her. They do, in all likelihood. But won't talk about it, because talking about it makes people think they are vulnerable. And "sissy". And that's anathema, but of course.
This post might seem a little too dramatic and serious, especially as it comes right after a feature on bombshells and thunderthighs. But telling this was essential, to me.
Until such a time as medical science progresses to a state where every patient is cured, we can only do one thing. Hope, and pray. (To a god whose existence, in the wake of all this, seems more than debatable.)
But then, that is all we an do.
Pray for the little children, and their families.
As i am sure you will all.
Have you ever felt so inadequate that it makes you want to cry in helplessness?
Have you ever been in a place when people around you feel hopeless, but you cannot come up with anything to console them?
I have.
Since the past couple of weeks.
I am posted in pediatrics these days. And at times, i am depressed.
Why? Because,
Nothing in medical education prepares us to tell vulnerable parents that their child, the one sleeping on the bed rather blissfully, might not make it until long.
Nothing in all the extensive training braces us enough to stand the grief of a mother (who works 14 hours a day as a coolie, for a less than hand-to-mouth existence) who is told that her child will not survive unless she went through a surgery that costs 6 lakhs of rupees, a sum of money she cannot even imagine there being.
And nothing, absolutely nothing can make us strong enough to answer the question parents dread we would answer in the negative : "Is there any hope, at all?"
One understands that by choosing medicine we have chosen a path that requires us to be a lot stronger than most people our age. But it remains that we are just 21 year olds, trying to pass exams, going through lives as complicated/mundane/hormone-driven as any 21 year olds', and that we do not have any answers.
We might have cut open a dead body, but that's just where our bravery ends.
We might look dapper in white coats with expensive stethoscopes, but that's just where our being doctors ends.
A few days ago, i spoke to a woman whose son had been admitted in the hospital. The son was a cherubic 3 year old with cerebral palsy, the fault perhaps of a local daai, who took too long to deliver the baby, or whoever else's. But one thing is certain, the child had cerebral palsy. A fairly common condition in the wards, and sometimes very crippling.
This particular child had a global developmental delay, meaning all aspects of his development were either retarded or absent. A truth the mother has grown accustomed to be oblivious to. She says the child looks at her, turns his head toward sounds she makes, and smiles from ear to ear when spoken to.
The reason this story is throat-gulp inducing is because all of it is impossible.
The child has cortical blindness, his brains cannot read the images brought by his eyes.
The child cannot hear any sound, let alone those the mother makes. He merely turns his head hither and thither, acknowledging a world only he lives in, a world not inhabited by even this woman who has given her all for this baby, her only one, for the past three years.
What do you tell her when she asks you, "He is alright, isn't he?"
Do you tell her that the apple of her eye does not have the eyes to see you, or the mind to recognize you, ever? Do you tell her this and hope to have the courage to console her?
You don't.
We don't, either.
We say, "Please talk to senior doctors, we are just students", and whisk away from the place to find a strong pillar to punch our clenched fists against. Not because we are incapable of helping the child medically, but because we are incapable of even saying words that would comfort her, albeit momentarily.
Worse is a visit to the neonatal ICU, where little babies weighing as little as 900 grams, looking no larger than the palm of your hand, struggle it out with their small lungs, failing hearts and tightly clenched fists, praying in their own languages, 'please god, please, i promise i will be a good boy'.
With a hundred tubes sticking out all over their bodies, synchronized beep-beeps are all they have for company with the beeps more often than not, counting down their final breaths and heartbeats.
And you merely tap at the glass cabin that is their home,
and feel helpless.
This is a phase every medical student goes through, i guess. This is the stuff hospital dramas on TV are made of, since forever. Only, this is the only thing they get close to showing the truth about.
Over time, we get refractory to this whole phenomenon, i am told. It amuses, or perhaps angers some of my non-medical friends when i sometimes talk of death and illness in a matter-of-fact manner. It angers me, in retrospect, when i think of myself having become thus, where illness is a case to be taken, and death, a figure on the register. But this is the only way i know of being. The system has not prepared me, or any of my friends to deal with situations like these.
Death, to us is cessation of cardiopulmonary activity and non-reactive pupils, as opposed to it being a bereavement and loss of livelihood to an entire family.
If depersonalizing oneself is what it takes to make it as a successful doctor, then may be i will not be one. For, i still feel sad for a woman of 40, whose only chance of being a mother counts its last few minutes on an ICU bed.
I am not saying others do not feel sorry for her. They do, in all likelihood. But won't talk about it, because talking about it makes people think they are vulnerable. And "sissy". And that's anathema, but of course.
This post might seem a little too dramatic and serious, especially as it comes right after a feature on bombshells and thunderthighs. But telling this was essential, to me.
Until such a time as medical science progresses to a state where every patient is cured, we can only do one thing. Hope, and pray. (To a god whose existence, in the wake of all this, seems more than debatable.)
But then, that is all we an do.
Pray for the little children, and their families.
As i am sure you will all.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Heyy naati...
One of the more important aspects of psychological development, they tell us, is Associative Learning. (No, this is no nerd talk; read on, premature ejaculator). One of the better known forms of this Associative Learning is Classical Conditioning/Pavlovian Conditioning. You all know about the famous dog that drooled all over the place every time that man with a doormat for a beard decided to get the bell to go 'Tink!'
(Yes, that one.)
We, much like the dog, react by association. Much like the dog, or more perhaps, is the case of a friend who looks like she consumed an overdose of Organophosphorus poison every time *Johnny Depp* is mentioned. So much so, i expect a newspaper mentioning him, to be sodden wet in her hands. (Even if it carried his obituary.)
The same goes with most guys i know when mention is of Salma Hayek and Most People Her Kind. Keira Knightley somehow gets involved in all this too, but one must remember a good face can attract. Occassionally.
So, you get the drift. Association.
I grew up associating things as well, like most normal human beings.
(Only, my mother thinks i was some kind of a whizkid, hardly normal. Aww. Reminds one of that proverb in Kannada that goes 'HettOrge heggaNa muddu, kaTTkonDOrge kODangi muddu', roughly meaning parents love their children even if they turned out to be gutter scrounging ugly black fat rats. Awww.)
Mom's flaring nostrils meant, 'man, am i getting flayed today.'
An aunt meant, duck for cover.
A neighbor meant, get your handkerchief out/be prepared to hold breath for all the time he is around.
Among other such associations,
Silk Smitha meant, sex.
Disco Shanti meant, SEX.
THAT, is the point of today's post.
Silk Smitha and Disco Shanti and their Pavlovian Influences on my Understanding of Sex.
Now, for those of you with refined tastes and Mozart for lullabies, an introduction to these curiously named entities is, ahem, sine qua non.
They were my association to, er, 'leave the room'.
Why?,
because parents grudge their children a view of the greener, meaner side.
These two women, these two healthy buxom women, these two healthy buxom lustrous-eyed women, apparently, induced 'wrong thoughts' in our innocent-as-a-fawn minds. Bah.
Anyway, just WHO are these two women? Well.
These two women happen to be the ULTIMATE item girls. Divas in their own right. (Mallika Sherawat, go jump in a dry well, or get some more silicone.) They managed to titillate all of South India for more than two decades, with movies running solely because of their 5-minute show of cleavage and hyper-kinetic pelvic thrusts. And they did it with so much aplomb. Hideous wigs, godawful Amrapali costumes, Srirampur graveyard dance-steps notwithstanding. Every time they entered the frame, the atmosphere turned electric. Palpable sexual tension. No knife sharp enough. Sample a few.
Situation 1 :
A bleeding hero would be tied up in the cool looking multicolored dungeon of the pipe-smoking villain, with the hero's mother and his love interest generally thrashing about. Why? Because they could never get their figures to look half as oooh as our lady Silk Smitha's, who would have emerged from god knows where, in a blond wig and a red sequin nano-skirt, with her 3-inch long RED fingernails tracing the hero's amply ketchup stained pectorals. And, always grooving to a song whose beat went more often than not, ding-chakk-digi-digi-chakk.
And the lyrics, something like, 'Silku, silku, silku, mysooru silku silku...'.
Situation 2 :
Another less climactic situation would include Vajramuni or some such son of Satan trying to score with our lady Disco, also known as The Original Thunder Thighs. She wasn't much of a talker though. Most she was required to say was, 'hehehehe, youu youu naati baay, heheheheh'. And make those righteous noises, from within bitten lips, that went, 'haaaaan...haaaaan'.
Situation 3 :
Disco/Silk in a saree, flowers in head, child in arms, crying her sexy lungs out. And telling a patriarch type character that the father of the child was 'none other than your son', the hero. Just when you thought the world had wronged our lady, she'd appear before a vile-looking man and say in that husky voice, 'Baass, work over'. The man would then utter an all encompassing Muahhahahaha. The camera would then pan to the fiery eyes of a taxidermic cheetah, that being the chosen item of interior decoration of the 80's villain. (Have you ever wondered why? I have.)
And then for the coup de grace, by the time the camera could pan back to Disco, she would have cast her saree off like it gave her a bad skin reaction, and greet us in a characteristic two piece!
Other such situations convinced me almost hypnopedically that these women meant sex. (These two, by the way, were invariably called Rosee, Daali, or just Baybeee)
Every time i was asked to leave the room, or the channel was changed, my rather diseased brain would weave scenarios involving the two. The background music to it was always the 'haaaan, naati' which would repeat in untiring cycles.
I would think that Disco Shanti would cook also in leather hot pants and whip people before serving them. And that every one of her sentences would end with her biting her lower lip to the point that it bled. You know, like, 'The keyboard *hussky voice* i type on, is... black', and then bite her lips.
(Yeah, i was a rather prurient, gutterboy type in my childhood.)
These association type characters always leave indelible marks on one's psyche. Which was probably why i was rather sad when Silk Smitha died some years ago. Committed suicide, that one. Sad sad. One only hopes she is doing the 'heyy naati' routine to all those Indra type lascivious characters up there.
As for Disco, i hear she got married (to a Telugu villain, no less) and settled for a life that does not quite involve leather chaddis and whips (it perhaps does, who knows?)
And those of you who have not quite known the magic of these two, i suggest you stop by some regional channels sometimes. (It wouldn't give an abscess in your angrezi-fied kewl butts.)
They truly don't make 'em like these two anymore.
Yo Silk! Yo Disco!
(Yes, that one.)
We, much like the dog, react by association. Much like the dog, or more perhaps, is the case of a friend who looks like she consumed an overdose of Organophosphorus poison every time *Johnny Depp* is mentioned. So much so, i expect a newspaper mentioning him, to be sodden wet in her hands. (Even if it carried his obituary.)
The same goes with most guys i know when mention is of Salma Hayek and Most People Her Kind. Keira Knightley somehow gets involved in all this too, but one must remember a good face can attract. Occassionally.
So, you get the drift. Association.
I grew up associating things as well, like most normal human beings.
(Only, my mother thinks i was some kind of a whizkid, hardly normal. Aww. Reminds one of that proverb in Kannada that goes 'HettOrge heggaNa muddu, kaTTkonDOrge kODangi muddu', roughly meaning parents love their children even if they turned out to be gutter scrounging ugly black fat rats. Awww.)
Mom's flaring nostrils meant, 'man, am i getting flayed today.'
An aunt meant, duck for cover.
A neighbor meant, get your handkerchief out/be prepared to hold breath for all the time he is around.
Among other such associations,
Silk Smitha meant, sex.
Disco Shanti meant, SEX.
THAT, is the point of today's post.
Silk Smitha and Disco Shanti and their Pavlovian Influences on my Understanding of Sex.
Now, for those of you with refined tastes and Mozart for lullabies, an introduction to these curiously named entities is, ahem, sine qua non.
They were my association to, er, 'leave the room'.
Why?,
because parents grudge their children a view of the greener, meaner side.
These two women, these two healthy buxom women, these two healthy buxom lustrous-eyed women, apparently, induced 'wrong thoughts' in our innocent-as-a-fawn minds. Bah.
Anyway, just WHO are these two women? Well.
These two women happen to be the ULTIMATE item girls. Divas in their own right. (Mallika Sherawat, go jump in a dry well, or get some more silicone.) They managed to titillate all of South India for more than two decades, with movies running solely because of their 5-minute show of cleavage and hyper-kinetic pelvic thrusts. And they did it with so much aplomb. Hideous wigs, godawful Amrapali costumes, Srirampur graveyard dance-steps notwithstanding. Every time they entered the frame, the atmosphere turned electric. Palpable sexual tension. No knife sharp enough. Sample a few.
Situation 1 :
A bleeding hero would be tied up in the cool looking multicolored dungeon of the pipe-smoking villain, with the hero's mother and his love interest generally thrashing about. Why? Because they could never get their figures to look half as oooh as our lady Silk Smitha's, who would have emerged from god knows where, in a blond wig and a red sequin nano-skirt, with her 3-inch long RED fingernails tracing the hero's amply ketchup stained pectorals. And, always grooving to a song whose beat went more often than not, ding-chakk-digi-digi-chakk.
And the lyrics, something like, 'Silku, silku, silku, mysooru silku silku...'.
Situation 2 :
Another less climactic situation would include Vajramuni or some such son of Satan trying to score with our lady Disco, also known as The Original Thunder Thighs. She wasn't much of a talker though. Most she was required to say was, 'hehehehe, youu youu naati baay, heheheheh'. And make those righteous noises, from within bitten lips, that went, 'haaaaan...haaaaan'.
Situation 3 :
Disco/Silk in a saree, flowers in head, child in arms, crying her sexy lungs out. And telling a patriarch type character that the father of the child was 'none other than your son', the hero. Just when you thought the world had wronged our lady, she'd appear before a vile-looking man and say in that husky voice, 'Baass, work over'. The man would then utter an all encompassing Muahhahahaha. The camera would then pan to the fiery eyes of a taxidermic cheetah, that being the chosen item of interior decoration of the 80's villain. (Have you ever wondered why? I have.)
And then for the coup de grace, by the time the camera could pan back to Disco, she would have cast her saree off like it gave her a bad skin reaction, and greet us in a characteristic two piece!
Other such situations convinced me almost hypnopedically that these women meant sex. (These two, by the way, were invariably called Rosee, Daali, or just Baybeee)
Every time i was asked to leave the room, or the channel was changed, my rather diseased brain would weave scenarios involving the two. The background music to it was always the 'haaaan, naati' which would repeat in untiring cycles.
I would think that Disco Shanti would cook also in leather hot pants and whip people before serving them. And that every one of her sentences would end with her biting her lower lip to the point that it bled. You know, like, 'The keyboard *hussky voice* i type on, is... black', and then bite her lips.
(Yeah, i was a rather prurient, gutterboy type in my childhood.)
These association type characters always leave indelible marks on one's psyche. Which was probably why i was rather sad when Silk Smitha died some years ago. Committed suicide, that one. Sad sad. One only hopes she is doing the 'heyy naati' routine to all those Indra type lascivious characters up there.
As for Disco, i hear she got married (to a Telugu villain, no less) and settled for a life that does not quite involve leather chaddis and whips (it perhaps does, who knows?)
And those of you who have not quite known the magic of these two, i suggest you stop by some regional channels sometimes. (It wouldn't give an abscess in your angrezi-fied kewl butts.)
They truly don't make 'em like these two anymore.
Yo Silk! Yo Disco!
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Clown
He instinctively wrinkled around the corners of his eyes;
sunny orange of the curtains too bright, for his eyes, and him.
Nights, with their camouflaging neon lights, comforted him.
Days, with their consuming clarity, caricatured him.
He reluctantly tore himself apart from the remnants of night,
and looked hesitantly towards the remains of the day.
sunny orange of the curtains too bright, for his eyes, and him.
Nights, with their camouflaging neon lights, comforted him.
Days, with their consuming clarity, caricatured him.
He reluctantly tore himself apart from the remnants of night,
and looked hesitantly towards the remains of the day.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Portmanteau film.
I am swimming fast.
The waters are murky. An intense green, barely showing the long, distorted shadows cast by the long palm tress that line the waterway on either side.
The fabric of water is crisscrossed by many tangled, tortuous water-plants.
I peel them apart; yet never forgetting to swim.
Swim fast.
An odd lotus, a lone lotus, a surprising white against a depressing green.
In bloom.
In full sway.
In total contrast. The lotus makes a fleeting appearance in the far corner of my busy left eye.
The emotion on my face is indiscernible.
I am sweating, perhaps.
I am out of breath, perhaps.
But,
i swim.
----------------------------
I walk in gliding movements. Like i am stuck to the wooden foot of a horse in a merry-go-round. Only, i am not going round. I glide.
The world around me is empty; and monochrome. With a tinge of the sun.
And dingy. (Unobtrusively so.)
I see no faces, i hear no sound.
I don't see myself, i don't hear myself.
I see what my feet see. Low and gliding.
Cobbled stone, well-worn pavement rocks, urban refuse.
Warm, water-soaked air in spurts; breaths of weary street dogs? I don't know.
But i know i am not stopping moving. And gliding.
Until,
a jerk.
A strong tug; at a sensitive solar plexus.
(And,
an unenthusiastically staid, weary, rhythmically squeaking fan.)
----------------------------
These are the only two recurrent dreams i get. I am sure they have definite psychoanalytical interpretations.
I don't know.
I wouldn't want to know.
I like the dreams too much.
The waters are murky. An intense green, barely showing the long, distorted shadows cast by the long palm tress that line the waterway on either side.
The fabric of water is crisscrossed by many tangled, tortuous water-plants.
I peel them apart; yet never forgetting to swim.
Swim fast.
An odd lotus, a lone lotus, a surprising white against a depressing green.
In bloom.
In full sway.
In total contrast. The lotus makes a fleeting appearance in the far corner of my busy left eye.
The emotion on my face is indiscernible.
I am sweating, perhaps.
I am out of breath, perhaps.
But,
i swim.
----------------------------
I walk in gliding movements. Like i am stuck to the wooden foot of a horse in a merry-go-round. Only, i am not going round. I glide.
The world around me is empty; and monochrome. With a tinge of the sun.
And dingy. (Unobtrusively so.)
I see no faces, i hear no sound.
I don't see myself, i don't hear myself.
I see what my feet see. Low and gliding.
Cobbled stone, well-worn pavement rocks, urban refuse.
Warm, water-soaked air in spurts; breaths of weary street dogs? I don't know.
But i know i am not stopping moving. And gliding.
Until,
a jerk.
A strong tug; at a sensitive solar plexus.
(And,
an unenthusiastically staid, weary, rhythmically squeaking fan.)
----------------------------
These are the only two recurrent dreams i get. I am sure they have definite psychoanalytical interpretations.
I don't know.
I wouldn't want to know.
I like the dreams too much.
Monday, May 28, 2007
'Scuse me, while i snuff a cry...
Dear all, do not blame me for coming up with another dreary post about academic pursuits. You must realize that when one is a medical student hoping to pass exams, precious else happens besides turning one dreary page after another, all filled with graphic pictures of grotesquely diseased breasts and penises, and then some. (So much for action.)
It is quite the paradox that the very organs that can turn one on could also,when slightly out of order, possess powers to let one lose appetite for days.
Be that as it may, the raison d'etre for my abusing bandwidth and your stopping by this time, is to let you in on an impending task which is so impossible i have chosen to call it The Impossible Task or TIT, for short.
(Yes, i agree i have a very corny sense of humour. And yes, i have read How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild And Got A Life).
The TIT i speak of here could also be referred to as The Impending Doom, or TID. So, in the likeness of Daag - The Fire, Baaz - A Bird In Danger, this disaster shall be called,
The Impossible Task - The Impending Doom,
or TIT - TID. Tittid for convenience.
Whatitees, this Tittid?
My internal - sigh - assessment - sigh - exam.
About the unfairness of medical exams, the evaluation, the unfairness, the ugly unfairness, and did i mention the godawful unfairness, i shall write about some other time.
But today, let us dissect my Tittid.
(As i write, it rains outside real horrorshow; like the clouds have determined to wipe out the human race. Loud and dramatic. Ah, how well they complement my mood)
I have five subjects this time. Let us now anatomize Tittid in heartbreaking, cerebrum-spinning
detail. (okay okay, it won't be too long, don't worry. Or, may be it will.)
*drum rolls, horns, confetti et cetera et cetera*
(You may choose to ignore the details, and jump directly to the synopsis of the story)
{1. General Medicine - Portions
Recommended reading - Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine - 1600 pages
Compulsory reading - Davidson's Principles and Practice of Internal Medicine - 739 pages.
Sidey-book-shunned-by-professors-WORSHIPPED-by-students - Medicine by George Matthew - 476 pages.
2. General Surgery - Portions
Recommended and Compulsory reading - Bailey and Love's Short Practice of Surgery, or The Book That Almost Gave My Mother A Slipped Disk.
(Apparently, it's a Big Deal. I realize most things in medicine work on face value. Ask me, it's a hardly Love-able book that hardly ever Bail-s you out of tough situations (such as Tittid). And Short Practice my arse. It runs 1522 pages, with an index that runs a book length itself,
at 70 pages.)
The portion is a cool Cover to Cover, id est, 1522 pages.
Sidey-book-HATED-by-professors - Manipal Manual of Surgery - 825 pages.
3. Paediatrics - Portions
Recommended reading - Nelson's Pediatrics - let us not even go there, but, for a ballpark figure, let's say 1200 pages?
Compulsory, sidey etc. - OP Ghai - 468 pages.
4. Gynaecology - Portions.
Recommended, compulsory, essential all rolled into one - Shaw's - 508 pages.
5. Orthopaedics - Portions
Like most paradoxes turn out, the chaps that deal with the hardest of things (thoo, gutterbrains all) have the softest of hearts.
Recommended, compulsory etc - Maheshwari's Essential Ortho - 26 (yay!) pages.}
So there.
Quick recap.
Recommended reading - 4,956 pages. Oh-ho-kay
Compulsory reading - 3,263 pages. Hmmm, but oh-ho-kay.
Sidey book reading - 2,103 pages. DANG. Et tu, sidey?
This is purest rant, i agree.
Does not warrant your time.
Does nothing to uplift you creatively. Or otherwise.
But, people-in-cushy-software-jobs, spare a thought for poor me. Me, with the exponentially sinking cheeks and shrinking waistline. Spare a thought. Do. I am coming off all clingy and needy, you think i don't realise that? But, how in the name of Hippo-fucking-crates am i to read 2,103 pages of mindnumbingly complex name-dropping in, let's see, EIGHT days?
You ask me to listen to Himesh Reshammiya for 20 hours non-stop. I will. Most that will result in, is brain damage. No problems, decent bargain.
But this?
I need sympathy. Not one of you can empathize, i agree.
While you are at it, pat yourselves on thine collective backs, for having made the right choice when it mattered most. To stay away from anything remotely close to a medical college.
Sigh. Unedited, at-one-go rants are all i am capable of writing. Blogs that discuss writing and ideas and 55-word stories give me a complex SO massive, *insert biggest simile you can think of here, and funniest*. But writing about those blogs where genuinely good writing abounds is
for another day. Also, about those that are famous for no particular reason. And of course, where pseudo- is the dictum.
All, my friend, in good time.
Now i have to get back to knowing what exactly constitutes a 'pain in the ass'.
For an aside - my multilingual, multi-genre playlist currently plays,
'Duniya mein hum aaye hain toh jeena hee paDega,
jeevan hain agar zehar toh peena hee paDega'.
(Lata Mangeshkar & chorus, Mother India, 1957)
Ah, old hindi film songs! How well they compliment my mood.
It is quite the paradox that the very organs that can turn one on could also,when slightly out of order, possess powers to let one lose appetite for days.
Be that as it may, the raison d'etre for my abusing bandwidth and your stopping by this time, is to let you in on an impending task which is so impossible i have chosen to call it The Impossible Task or TIT, for short.
(Yes, i agree i have a very corny sense of humour. And yes, i have read How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild And Got A Life).
The TIT i speak of here could also be referred to as The Impending Doom, or TID. So, in the likeness of Daag - The Fire, Baaz - A Bird In Danger, this disaster shall be called,
The Impossible Task - The Impending Doom,
or TIT - TID. Tittid for convenience.
Whatitees, this Tittid?
My internal - sigh - assessment - sigh - exam.
About the unfairness of medical exams, the evaluation, the unfairness, the ugly unfairness, and did i mention the godawful unfairness, i shall write about some other time.
But today, let us dissect my Tittid.
(As i write, it rains outside real horrorshow; like the clouds have determined to wipe out the human race. Loud and dramatic. Ah, how well they complement my mood)
I have five subjects this time. Let us now anatomize Tittid in heartbreaking, cerebrum-spinning
detail. (okay okay, it won't be too long, don't worry. Or, may be it will.)
*drum rolls, horns, confetti et cetera et cetera*
(You may choose to ignore the details, and jump directly to the synopsis of the story)
{1. General Medicine - Portions
Recommended reading - Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine - 1600 pages
Compulsory reading - Davidson's Principles and Practice of Internal Medicine - 739 pages.
Sidey-book-shunned-by-professors-WORSHIPPED-by-students - Medicine by George Matthew - 476 pages.
2. General Surgery - Portions
Recommended and Compulsory reading - Bailey and Love's Short Practice of Surgery, or The Book That Almost Gave My Mother A Slipped Disk.
(Apparently, it's a Big Deal. I realize most things in medicine work on face value. Ask me, it's a hardly Love-able book that hardly ever Bail-s you out of tough situations (such as Tittid). And Short Practice my arse. It runs 1522 pages, with an index that runs a book length itself,
at 70 pages.)
The portion is a cool Cover to Cover, id est, 1522 pages.
Sidey-book-HATED-by-professors - Manipal Manual of Surgery - 825 pages.
3. Paediatrics - Portions
Recommended reading - Nelson's Pediatrics - let us not even go there, but, for a ballpark figure, let's say 1200 pages?
Compulsory, sidey etc. - OP Ghai - 468 pages.
4. Gynaecology - Portions.
Recommended, compulsory, essential all rolled into one - Shaw's - 508 pages.
5. Orthopaedics - Portions
Like most paradoxes turn out, the chaps that deal with the hardest of things (thoo, gutterbrains all) have the softest of hearts.
Recommended, compulsory etc - Maheshwari's Essential Ortho - 26 (yay!) pages.}
So there.
Quick recap.
Recommended reading - 4,956 pages. Oh-ho-kay
Compulsory reading - 3,263 pages. Hmmm, but oh-ho-kay.
Sidey book reading - 2,103 pages. DANG. Et tu, sidey?
This is purest rant, i agree.
Does not warrant your time.
Does nothing to uplift you creatively. Or otherwise.
But, people-in-cushy-software-jobs, spare a thought for poor me. Me, with the exponentially sinking cheeks and shrinking waistline. Spare a thought. Do. I am coming off all clingy and needy, you think i don't realise that? But, how in the name of Hippo-fucking-crates am i to read 2,103 pages of mindnumbingly complex name-dropping in, let's see, EIGHT days?
You ask me to listen to Himesh Reshammiya for 20 hours non-stop. I will. Most that will result in, is brain damage. No problems, decent bargain.
But this?
I need sympathy. Not one of you can empathize, i agree.
While you are at it, pat yourselves on thine collective backs, for having made the right choice when it mattered most. To stay away from anything remotely close to a medical college.
Sigh. Unedited, at-one-go rants are all i am capable of writing. Blogs that discuss writing and ideas and 55-word stories give me a complex SO massive, *insert biggest simile you can think of here, and funniest*
for another day. Also, about those that are famous for no particular reason. And of course, where pseudo- is the dictum.
All, my friend, in good time.
Now i have to get back to knowing what exactly constitutes a 'pain in the ass'.
For an aside - my multilingual, multi-genre playlist currently plays,
'Duniya mein hum aaye hain toh jeena hee paDega,
jeevan hain agar zehar toh peena hee paDega'.
(Lata Mangeshkar & chorus, Mother India, 1957)
Ah, old hindi film songs! How well they compliment my mood.
Friday, May 18, 2007
So, some surgeons are lecherous
There are all kinds of surgeons. (You know, that bunch of slightly over-educated barbers.)
General surgeons, pediatric surgeons, plastic surgeons, neurosurgeons et cetera et cetera.
Most are good.
Some are just plain awesome.
Some are well, lecherous.
I know one such. Let's call him L; L for lecherous, L for lascivious, L for loser and L for first letter of his name. He happens to be a professor; or so he professes. His small stature is in absolute inverse relation to his Legendary Libido. I think he has a lardaceous, ladoo-munching low-life for a wife. But then, that's just my conjecture.
Now, our man Casanova was to take a tutorial class for us.
This is a class where we take a case which might come for the exam, present it to a consultant and strain cochleas to absorb every whisper that emanates from their halitotic oral cavities. You know, we are kinda desperate; and they kinda stink.
This week, like i mentioned already, L was to come and shower surgical nuggets all over us. His tutorials have characteristics completely their own. At least, unlike any i have encountered thus far.
He -
* makes the girls come closer, to each other, and to him.
* forgets the guys, for all practical purposes. (No, i ain't complaining.)
* insists that the girls tuck their identity cards to their white coat sleeves; and insists on peering down them, just to know their names.
* sometimes pulls them from their coats, and none too subtly while doing so.
* is a syphilitic bastard.
What was the case that we were presenting, one might ask.
You know hernia, dear readers?
You know hernia, you do. It is something that pops out of one's groin (generally).
You know hydrocele, dear readers?
You probably do not. It means fluid in one's testes.
Our patient this time, had both. Aww.
L walks in like a Little Mouse, all prepared to do L talk. ('reys the leyg, reys the heyd, do the teyst', 'Chaurasia is a flute singer' etc)
Patient strips waist down for thirteen pairs of eyes to fix on his things.
L starts.
Girls closer, boys forgotten..the routine.
We do not know what kind of sick behaviour it is, but he always asks the girls to examine the testes and the hernia. The test, by the way, involves some serious grabbing at things. He prods on extremely hesitant, rosary-counting types to make the 'swelling' more tense. This is not some ploy to teach the students better, but the man is so into cheap thrills you want to call him Rakhi Sawant.
Another test involves using one's index finger to do some poking around in certain delicate areas. And his idea of questioning us is to turn to a girl and ask, 'Why not the middle finger?'
There is another silly exercise where we need to localize the hernia using three fingers in a specific manner. In such a scenario, what is the need to take a girl's hand and hold individual fingers, all in the garb to teach us, while he could use his own fingers, that non-amputated bitch.
Cheap shot. (And the man is not getting enough action)
While all this lewd behaviour does slightly irritate me, what really takes my goat is this. During exams, the mere presence of slightly hypertrophied mammary tissue on a humanoid bearing XX ensures spectacular success (according to one running legend, he makes people bend to retrieve paper from the ground). While the unfortunate other half with the weak Y suffers untold indignation for not knowing enough Bailey, Love, Das.
What is this undue advantage to the fairer sex eh? To say, no girl in my batch is even fair.
Totally unfair.
As for Mr.L, balls to him.
(Or, maybe not)
General surgeons, pediatric surgeons, plastic surgeons, neurosurgeons et cetera et cetera.
Most are good.
Some are just plain awesome.
Some are well, lecherous.
I know one such. Let's call him L; L for lecherous, L for lascivious, L for loser and L for first letter of his name. He happens to be a professor; or so he professes. His small stature is in absolute inverse relation to his Legendary Libido. I think he has a lardaceous, ladoo-munching low-life for a wife. But then, that's just my conjecture.
Now, our man Casanova was to take a tutorial class for us.
This is a class where we take a case which might come for the exam, present it to a consultant and strain cochleas to absorb every whisper that emanates from their halitotic oral cavities. You know, we are kinda desperate; and they kinda stink.
This week, like i mentioned already, L was to come and shower surgical nuggets all over us. His tutorials have characteristics completely their own. At least, unlike any i have encountered thus far.
He -
* makes the girls come closer, to each other, and to him.
* forgets the guys, for all practical purposes. (No, i ain't complaining.)
* insists that the girls tuck their identity cards to their white coat sleeves; and insists on peering down them, just to know their names.
* sometimes pulls them from their coats, and none too subtly while doing so.
* is a syphilitic bastard.
What was the case that we were presenting, one might ask.
You know hernia, dear readers?
You know hernia, you do. It is something that pops out of one's groin (generally).
You know hydrocele, dear readers?
You probably do not. It means fluid in one's testes.
Our patient this time, had both. Aww.
L walks in like a Little Mouse, all prepared to do L talk. ('reys the leyg, reys the heyd, do the teyst', 'Chaurasia is a flute singer' etc)
Patient strips waist down for thirteen pairs of eyes to fix on his things.
L starts.
Girls closer, boys forgotten..the routine.
We do not know what kind of sick behaviour it is, but he always asks the girls to examine the testes and the hernia. The test, by the way, involves some serious grabbing at things. He prods on extremely hesitant, rosary-counting types to make the 'swelling' more tense. This is not some ploy to teach the students better, but the man is so into cheap thrills you want to call him Rakhi Sawant.
Another test involves using one's index finger to do some poking around in certain delicate areas. And his idea of questioning us is to turn to a girl and ask, 'Why not the middle finger?'
There is another silly exercise where we need to localize the hernia using three fingers in a specific manner. In such a scenario, what is the need to take a girl's hand and hold individual fingers, all in the garb to teach us, while he could use his own fingers, that non-amputated bitch.
Cheap shot. (And the man is not getting enough action)
While all this lewd behaviour does slightly irritate me, what really takes my goat is this. During exams, the mere presence of slightly hypertrophied mammary tissue on a humanoid bearing XX ensures spectacular success (according to one running legend, he makes people bend to retrieve paper from the ground). While the unfortunate other half with the weak Y suffers untold indignation for not knowing enough Bailey, Love, Das.
What is this undue advantage to the fairer sex eh? To say, no girl in my batch is even fair.
Totally unfair.
As for Mr.L, balls to him.
(Or, maybe not)
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Sap
There is a gnawing desire to tell you all that goes on in the many folds of my small brain,
of the grey and black static that is interrupted by images of color, woven with words and memories,
of the impulses that present as alpha and beta to the more mundane,
of ideas that remain muted, but never erased,
of the visuals i paint in a myriad of colors, but could never put in words,
of the void and brimfulness that my thoughts seem to be constantly vacillating between,
of the voices that doubt and whispers that encourage,
of why the first falling flower of autumn has me all depressed and happy,
of chaos and no-chaos, determined simply by the presence and absence of people,
of my anger and frustration, and inability to counter either,
of words that lend themselves into sentences, but never make it to the tongue, held and strangulated in shy vocal cords,
of...
(now, if only your phone was not always engaged)
of the grey and black static that is interrupted by images of color, woven with words and memories,
of the impulses that present as alpha and beta to the more mundane,
of ideas that remain muted, but never erased,
of the visuals i paint in a myriad of colors, but could never put in words,
of the void and brimfulness that my thoughts seem to be constantly vacillating between,
of the voices that doubt and whispers that encourage,
of why the first falling flower of autumn has me all depressed and happy,
of chaos and no-chaos, determined simply by the presence and absence of people,
of my anger and frustration, and inability to counter either,
of words that lend themselves into sentences, but never make it to the tongue, held and strangulated in shy vocal cords,
of...
(now, if only your phone was not always engaged)
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